A Swedish teenage football prodigy who is acquired by a top Italian team finds that the high price tag placed on his skills doesn’t necessarily transfer to his self-worth, in this impressive, knotty examination of the psychology of sporting excellence. The second feature from writer-director Ronnie Sandahl (who also wrote the screenplay for the tale of tennis rivalry Borg vs McEnroe), Tigers is inspired by the real-life story of Martin Bengtsson.
Erik Enge is remarkable in the central role of Martin. He’s a gauche, driven kid with braces and a notebook in which he writes, in his naive child’s hand, motivational notes to himself: Train Eat Recover. But he finds himself in a world that, while not exactly grownup – the other junior team members are arrested in a kind of petulant permanent adolescence – is full of adult temptations and challenges.
